The experiences in World of Warcraft through the eyes of a player that can't spend 10 hours a day raiding.

Monday, March 10, 2008

No... I'm not Dead

Wow... I almost completely neglected my blog. How horrible of me. The majority of the issue was a presentation that I had at work last Friday and the preparation that had to go into it. A small part was that I simply didn't have anything super useful to blog about. Okay, that's kinda a cop-out, 'cause I almost always have something to say. But, on to today's post.

Yes... I'm not dead. I didn't burn up in flames. But I did respec Leiandra. So, after years of being a mostly fire mage, I'm now mostly arcane, with just enough points in fire to get Pyroblast. I still may play around with my spec a little, but I'm enjoying it so far.

I always figured that the arcane spec would be so mana inefficient, especially since in the old days, you had to spam Arcane Missiles. Now, with Arcane Blast, there's a chance to mix things up a bit more. One of the keys seems to be start casting your 4th Arcane Blast while you have the debuff (so fast casting), but then have it finish the cast once the debuff has worn off (so for way less mana). This means that you have to "wait" between your 3rd and 4th Arcane Blast. You do that by filling in the space with Arcane Missiles and possibly a Scorch in there as well.

Wow... that's a lot more than just watching for the end of the casting bar for Fireballs. And it means that I don't really have to pay much attention to the Scorch debuff on the target. And it also gives me the fun toys of Instant Cast (Presence of Mind) and increased damage of Arcane Power. I get a lot more spell damage via Mind Mastery (+ Spell Damage of 25% of Intellect), and more damage done by crits with Spell Power.

Another offset to the high mana costs are Clearcasting (Arcane Concentration), mana regen when casting (Arcane Meditation), and more Intellect = more mana (Arcane Mind). And I also use Mage Armor (more regen while casting) instead of the Molten Armor, so helps a bit as well.

I can still hit pretty hard with my fireballs as well, so I can conserve mana if need be. I'll have to spend some more play time with this to see if I really enjoy it, but so far... it's a fun change. Heck... I can even easily farm fire elementals now. heh.

I didn't get Slow with this go around. I may have to spec into that later. So... message of the day: Try new specs... you might just like them.

Sure I'll respec back for raids, that's what the guild bank is for, isn't it?

I'm actually jealous that you can respec and be 100% effective in the same armor. Hybrid classes are cool and all, but it takes a whole different set of armor to actually be effective. While some pure DPS classes have armor specific to sets (+fire dmg instead of +spell dmg) most armor you get is generic, allowing you to change your spec every day and be 100% effective.

(Waiting for someone to point out the cases where I'm wrong, I'm always wrong)

I just thought of one case, my huntard can change from BM to MM and be 100% effective, but to be 100% effective with survival, I would have to switch enchants/gems if I wanted to have a good Expose Weakness.

There's a lot of things that I should be changing. Mostly enchants and gems, but yeah... gear, no. Well, I have my spellfire set that allows me to pretty easily switch between fire and arcane, but to go to ice... I'd be completely gimped.

Arcane requires a lot less + spell hit, so I'm slowly going to change out some of those gems. But for now, they allow me to still cast my fire spells pretty effectively.

So, you're kind of right, but you're kind of wrong too. It's certainly not as bad as a paladin or any other true hybrid class by any means, but there's still some costs involved. Then again, by changing spec for a mage, I'm only changing my type of damage, not my role in a raid. When I respec Leiandra to Healing-mage... then we'll have issues. :)

For what it's worth I have been pure Arcane from the start of 3.0The mana conservation traits in the tree seem to work OK...I can burn down a 70 mob with AM's without much trouble...sometimes if I agro 2 or 3 I have to resort to running...hehehe...but otherwise works for me...btw, I am not overly endowed with good gear. Running solo means I have missed out on all the instance stuff!

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About Me

I am the Guild Leader of Primogeniture, a raiding guild on Bronzebeard. Most of us have significant others and families, so we mostly devote our night hours (and lack of sleep) to working together. I've been playing for 3 years now, and have leveled multiple toons to cap.